


memoriam; redux

by cherubique



Series: amicitia - when everyone lives [1]
Category: Oxenfree (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Protective Siblings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-19
Updated: 2019-08-19
Packaged: 2020-09-07 07:48:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,232
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20305972
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cherubique/pseuds/cherubique
Summary: This time through, Michael is hale and hearty, having stayed in Camena for college- and Alex can’t quite let go of the ghosts from the island. He might not remember what happened, but he knows he worries about the discrepancies with the sister he knows and loves, and Jonas, this supposed other-brother that seemingly sprung out of thin air overnight.





	memoriam; redux

**Author's Note:**

> my first time writing for the fandom! and- i know that alex canonically has blue hair while michael was alive, but i thought it would be more interesting as a recall to the lake afterwards. :-)

Michael kept pointing out irregularities. 

To him they stick out like jagged bone shards in his craw, cutting into the soft upper palate, the fleshiness of his gums. He runs his tongue over his teeth, swivelling figure eights and half traced letters, pouching the inside of his mouth, as he tries to make sense of what he knows and what he _knows._ The distinction between the two wavers indelicately, and it seems almost impossible to extricate one from the other. There is the wealth of empirical evidence in front of him, and the cerebral fogginess of what used to be, was- only it wasn’t. It drives him up the wall.

Her hair is the first to draw his eye: the electric blue a startling divergence from the soft auburn mirrored in his own curls. He runs a hand through his hair, clucking softly in reproach: has she always been that wild? Is this some kind of teenage phase? It’s easy to forget that the age gap between the two of them is closer to the thin sliver between her front teeth than the grand canyon he broke his arm travelling that one smouldering summer. They both remember her writing in big blocky capital letters, GET WELL SOON. He’d joked that she made him into a Hallmark holiday card, and she shot back that a little glitter would do some good for his sallow complexion. He still has the photographs of the cut off cast tucked into the back of his dresser. 

Does she need him to go pick up some colour fast shampoo, has she been using conditioner? Dyeing is a pretty harsh thing to subjugate your hair to- especially if you bleached it, he reprimands, paternal and doting in the same measure, brushing some of the blue behind her ear. It dries it out just like straw. Just like dead grass under the high heat of summer. 

It looks good though, he assures her. You just need to take better care of it, is all. You just have to be more mindful. The sunlight lit the lake’s surface near to this shade, a blue bright enough, purely blue enough that it made your eyes water to look at it. It’s a scene that burns itself into your retinas, leaves you red eyed and irritated. She wears it as a reminder. Alex closes her eyes and breathes in shakily. The last time that Michael cupped her face like this was the night before he drowned, thumb rasping over the peach fuzz on her cheek just as fondly. 

The worn red jacket is the next. She never used to slouch around in it, and certainly not for every hour of the day. It carries all sorts of smells, echoing in memory: woodsmoke from campfires, hot air roiling over the marina, damp dirt kicked up from underneath flat rocks in pursuit of leggy little lizards and interestingly metallic beetles. Michael used to wear it to track meets, or else wandering around town, to ward off the coolly crisp bite of autumnal air. It’s heavy, and bulky, and entirely out of season. And yet Alex waddles around with it on like a resolutely stubborn duckling, carrying its variety of dirt smudges and spilled drinks half daubed out with paper napkins. 

On one dreary Monday morning, when he’d plucked it off of the back of her office chair and thrown it into the wash without telling her, Alex had lurched up and out of her bed like the undead. Its absence burned like a brand. She scrabbled around her room, tossing books, light furniture, and boxes all over the place in her fervent search for the worn fabric. Panic rose up in her throat like a caterpillar punching its limbs out of the chrysalis, undulating and wriggling out into the open air. The room looked like it’d been on the receiving end of a rabid pack of toddlers. 

It wasn’t until she had staggered into the living room in tears, throwing darned and patched throw pillows like a maelstrom of teenage angst had he noticed the commotion from his bedroom. Michael had toed his way down the stairs, careful to avoid any of the particularly creaky steps. He didn’t want to startle her. His headphones had been brought down around his neck, the clunky heaviness of them making it seem oddly spindly by comparison, insubstantial, as if it might snap at any given moment. 

“Alex?” Her name had been said with an edge of wariness, as he ducked one of the ugly fleece blankets draped out across the back of the couch in their father’s bachelor attempts at home decor. It had a brown horse on a green field, and it was hideous enough that it should have been consigned to storage, or maybe the garage to keep him company when he worked on the truck. The horse grinned gormlessly upwards at him. Michael thought that horses shouldn’t have teeth, the way that they bulged and protruded out of its mouth was surely indecent. 

“Michael!” She’d cried out, frustrated and wound up, hands knotted up in her hair- tears streaming down her face and rolling off of her chin in huge blots. It was an irrational attachment to the jacket, especially since this time around, Michael was healthy and hale in front of her. Alex was well aware of this. But she had never outgrown the comforting imitation of a hug, wrapped up in the soft fabric as if nestled against her brother’s chest around the campfire at the beach: an annual affair of friendship and throwing pinecones into the flames to listen to the resin snap, pop, and crackle, like the annoyingly cheerful elves proclaimed from Michael’s favourite battered cereal box on the shelves. It was a trip to smell the woodsmoke, listen to the sound of the ocean returning to wash over the lip of the shoreline. Constant. Something you could rely on, take for granted that it was just happening. 

The explanation had come out in a rambled, jumbled mess of syllables and snot, the occasional pause to sniffle. Michael had stood there, a little gape mouthed, before darting out of the room. He’d pried the freshly washed jacket out of the dryer, eyebrows still climbing up to his hairline in surprise. One little sock flopped out of its arm, dyed pink from his carelessness in setting the machine. “It’s right here, I thought it might be nice to wash it for you. Before you woke up,” he’d explained, cautious, as if afraid she might melt down again on the white shag carpet. Alex had snatched it up, threw her arms into it, and then thrown those self same arms around his waist. He’d grunted at the impact, but held his own: supporting both of their weight without complaint. 

The two of them had stood there for the better part of an hour, one of his hands awkwardly petting her bright blue hair in an attempt to soothe her, the other rubbing her back, murmuring assurances that trailed off in an uptick betraying his utter confusion at the hysterics. She cried until her eyes were too swollen to see out of. Her face was puffy and red, nose horrifically congested. She’d scrubbed at her face with her sleeves pulled down over onto her hands, until Michael picked her up as if she was still a child and ran a facecloth under the cold tap, and blotted, dabbed, and patted away the irritation. The whole time, he’d stayed silent, but the questions brimming inside of him were written clearly across his face. He was just too polite to ask them. Alex had never explained what he didn’t ask about: how could she? That after he’d drowned, it’d been the only way she could feel close to him, like he was still there, a reassuring arm draped over her shoulders and the little squeeze he’d give her before walking off to go greet- Kristin, was who he claimed his last girlfriend was. Kristin. 

Clarissa had also given Michael pause. Alex was never sure just how much of the island’s events that she remembered. Clarissa was infamously tight lipped about it all. She had long consigned herself to cutting it out of her life, stepping around the nights until they might as well have never happened at all. The two girls weren’t really on friendly speaking terms. There are some ghosts that can’t be exorcised quite so easily, and so the two side stepped around one another with deep unease at their mutual history, rewoven and rewritten, until neither one was sure what had and hadn’t really happened. 

The first time that Michael had encountered Clarissa, the group casually getting milkshakes at the local diner - he still liked chocolate, with whipped cream piled high and a bright red maraschino cherry that he’d suck on, slurping the syrup off before biting into the tender fruit - Michael had stared openly. It was a guileless confusion, as if he was struggling to recall who she reminded him of. The slice of time had the same strangeness of encountering a middle school friend in middle age, at Whole Foods quibbling over quinoa or strawberries to go with their latest clean cleanse kick, when the last time you had seen the wild bastard was scoffing down chocolate pudding spiked with fruit roll up bits and studding smarties. It took him a whole minute of awkwardly stretched taut-tight tension to close his mouth. He’d laughed, stiltedly: popping the cherry into his mouth to silence himself. Everyone had looked away at the sheer gauchely nature of the laugh, more of an automaton’s bark of robotic amusement than anything else. 

Chewing contemplatively, he’d eventually shook his head like a dog. As if the gesture had cleared his mind, Michael lapsed easily into his usual chipper, upbeat conversation, as casual and familiar with each and every one of them at the table as if he was a childhood confidante, despite most of them being younger than him. He wasn’t just Alex’s older brother, he was Michael, as much at home and at ease parked at the grubby table under cracked and humming halogen lights as any one else. It had still occupied the groupchat’s messages that night, a flurry of oh my god, did you see that? And do you think he knows? And what was up with Michael, dude totally space cadeted out. 

Most of all, Jonas and Alex’s seemingly inexplicable closeness bewildered Michael. He was her other-brother, Jonas would laugh, fluffing up Alex’s hair. Brother from another mother, sister from another mister, he never seemed to run out of corny phrases to apply to the two of them. Jonas didn’t seem to quite recall the island properly, either, thinking that he had been invited along by Ren, and the rest a blank haze of walking along long nature trails. It’d been a pain in the ass, or rather his knees, he’d snark to Alex, when she poked very carefully, prodding him for recollection. Ren and Jonas were now supposedly brothers in arms at driving the town to distraction, the law enforcement shaking grim, silver touched heads at the cough syrup chugging and class skiving, kleptomaniac and fist swinging pair. The two seemed to take to their new (or old?) roles quite happily.

Michael thought that he was a terrible influence. In all honesty, he probably was: it was more than once Jonas would sneak in through the back window to hide low for a little while at the town’s goldenboy’s house: they won’t think to find me here! He’d wink, brushing dirt and leaves out of his hair onto the kitchen linoleum to Michael’s moue of distaste. He was tired of covering up for him. Michael did it anyways, for Alex- and this she knew. Even if she was the only one who could read the displeasure written in the way his shoulders bunched up, the little dimples that showed up when his mouth was quirked up or down vehemently, the subtle eleven lines beginning to carve themselves in between his eyebrows. He had a very expressive face. A flexible face, Jonas would say, pulling a silly one himself: fingers hooked into his mouth and eyes bulging wide in an expression meant to frighten. Alex startled less easily these days. Still, it never failed to provoke raucous laughter from Ren. And Ren’s laughter never failed to pull a beaming grin from Jonas. 

Jonas might not have been able to clearly recall the trip out, but some of his same behaviours remained. This was in spite of the fact that in every single surviving photograph - that Ren had pulled from her hands when Alex had flicked a lighter frantically in a maniac frenzy of wanting to purge the evidence like Clarissa had expunged it from her own mind, even if it meant burning things she and he knew she’d regret burning - it was Michael where Jonas should have been. Same poses, same smile, same cocksure confidence radiating from his profile. He still gesticulated widely with his hands, still tugged his beanie down nervously over his ear, still smiled a little too hesitantly to seem genuine even when he was. He still interacted with her in a way that Michael saw as overly familiar, eyes narrowing as he butted in between them, the bulk of his body intervening. He was cool and indifferent where Jonas was warm and effusive.

Jonas would thoughtlessly pull her hair back in a ponytail for her if it came loose, the elastic scrunchie snapping across his wrist with practice that had never occurred. He’d smudge little bits of brownies or dirt off of her face with a licked thumb. Even though she was more than capable of doing either herself, Jonas would impulsively do up the buttons on her coat, or zip it up to just below her chin, and then yanking it down a bit to give her breathing room, grinning as he did so. 

He didn’t seem to think that there was anything wrong about mindlessly invading her personal space like this. Michael coughing and hacking up a storm didn’t seem to get the message across either. He just seemed like he was pantomiming a bad case of bronchitis. Jonas took to buying little cherry cough lozenges. He’d pop one out of its silver foil packet packaging, and offer it to Michael with that same guileless smile that got him out of sticky situations with the local law enforcement officers more than once, and Michael would stand there, tight lipped and snatch the lozenge out of his relaxed hands: too uptight and mannered to snub a gift, even if he’d rather flick it into the gutter. 

The behaviour was innocent enough. Every quick motion all arose from the time they’d spent together, clambering up and down the pathways and digging up notes out of the trodden earth, clamped behind large rocks, fingers twiddling and spinning the dial of her handheld radio in dizzying arcs. He’d fussed about her being able to see, strands of her hair whipping into her mouth as she turned her head this way and that in search of errant papers. He’d clean off her face if she tumbled, or had a little dirt scuffed up onto the curve of her cheek from him pulling her up steep inclines. He’d worry over whether she was warm enough, as night settled in thick and midnight blue, winds roaring over the ocean. They’d carried more than the smell of sea salt encrusted thick on wooden piers, bringing old mournful refrains of songs half heard and a chill that permeated down to bone. Jonas had sworn that he could hear his mother singing to him. This had seemed to give him some measure of comfort, after the initial sharp stab of grief. Alex had never been able to shake off the chills that it gave her, that scratchy, low mournful croon, like nails embedded into rotting lighthouse walls and carving deep. Disturbing.

Still, in this timeline, in this iteration- all these innocent gestures all give Michael sharp pause. It wasn’t that he was overbearing, or overstepping his bounds. It was that he was an older brother who didn’t quite trust the older delinquent running around town, fingers twitching in a five finger discount for whatever catches his fancy. Especially not around his baby sister. His eyes were always dark with inscrutable emotion, micro expressions and tells flickering through a rota of anger, wariness, and bitterness.

Alex thinks it’s because of what gnawed at him to leave Camena, and the fury he holds towards someone who flouts the constraints of that persona so easily. Someone who doesn’t live under the social microscope, scrutinized within an inch of his life, always held up as the shining example with nowhere to hide. Michael never asked for the spotlight, but he survived the pressure of it all: teeth gritted into a ground glass smile, the glamour of the golden boy- no, a man, a man to put Camena on the map. He stood proud, shoulders back, head raised tall- and gave every impression of being pleased to have been selected for such lofty pressures. Well mannered to a fault. Amiable to distraction. Still, surviving didn’t mean thriving. 

Jonas bites his lip, buttoning down all the things he could say in sharp retort: a nagging insecurity about paling by comparison, especially academic track record: Michael’s is a flawless finish, a score for the record board: honour roll, 4.0 GPA through and through. His looks more like a forest fire’s aftermath: carbonized, charred, earth salted for a final finish. His stint in the county jail certainly doesn’t help, a permanently marring black mark against his name. He keeps his head down, eyes trained hard onto the blades of grass scuffed beneath both of their feet when Michael chews him out, voice heavy. His hand is cinched around Jonas’ forearm, grounding him in the conversation, a warning from someone who’s concerned about Alex- because he loves Alexandra, his little sister: and he only wants what’s best for her, yeah? Don’t get her into any trouble, now.

Michael’s animosity is dulled a little when he overhears Jonas encouraging Alex to do well in school. In this life, grief doesn’t cloud her mind quite as heavily: her brother is here, ruddy cheeked and bright eyed. Ghosts plucked from the strings of memory still resonate in her head, but she only needs to call him up to hear his voice, breathing sending static crackling down the line. Ah, yeah? It’s Michael here. I know, she responds, voice soft and small. I know. 

In this time around, she doesn’t skip her AP aptitude test: she places well. Ren still has his mouth seer suckered over the lip of the cough syrup, but some things don’t change. Michael thinks it’s important that she does well, gets into a good college: finds herself in a career that’s fulfilling and pays the bills, makes enough to live carefree and happy. 

That’s what he wants for her, he’ll say softly, even if he doesn’t understand, brushing her bright blue hair through for her when they’re lolling on the veranda like a pack of puppies, bodies melting and sticky with sweat under the oppressing summer heat. He wants for her to be happy.


End file.
